The phenomenon, which even has a name now—“prankvertising”—has really ramped up since then, perhaps because of Halloween. A few recent examples are pretty spooky, anyway.
For example, Benjamin Moore paint hired painters to do a job in a creepy house and then played every trick in the book to scare them out of their wits.

It looks like the prankvertising trend won’t stop after Oct. 31, though. Toys “R” Us has started a holiday campaign that involves fooling kids into thinking they were going on a boring field trip, only to show up at a Toys “R” Us store.

One thing that’s fairly clear about all these stunts: They get attention. LG’s apocalyptic prank was particularly well covered on the Web. It’s at 14 million views and counting on YouTube. The Toys “R” Us prank has netted 40,000 views in about four days.

You have to wonder whether there might be diminishing returns as more and more brands get into prankvertising, though. As with anything else, a brand’s prank will really have to stand out and be original for blogs to take notice the way they did with LG.

What do you think? Is prankvertising a flash in the pan or something we’ll be seeing more of in 2014 and beyond?